Shaparak Khorsandi delights her audience with gentle good humour and salacious anecdotes

Posted on 19th June 2022

Back in the 90s, there was no social media, no dating sites, and – if we are to believe Shaparak Khorsandi – no shame. In her early twenties Shappi, as she was then known, was an unrepentant ladette, drinking blokes under the table because, well, it was the nineties.

Before launching into what proved to be a surprisingly though provoking and reflective routine we were treated to a warm up from Ms. Khorsandi herself, offering up what amounted to a cuddly chat. Explaining that in these straightened times she couldn’t afford a bone fide support act, we instead got something more akin to informal rumination, largely revolving around her day in Diss. Shaparak Khorsandi was very different from the acerbic persona of Shappi Khorsandi I’d previously witnessed. Scatter brained, distracted and utterly charming, she candidly shared how a recent diagnosis of ADHD and the consequent medication had been transformative for her. Despite a traumatic taxi ride all the way from Peterborough, this was clearly a person much more at ease with herself.

After the interval, we got the “proper” show, a self-deprecating examination of Shaparak’s time as a raver. In a clever inversion of the usual routines of forty-something comics, she marvelled at the sensitivity and awareness of her children, marvelling at the sophistication of their thinking and behaviour. Far from celebrating the hedonism of the nineties, her routine held up a mirror to the insecurities and vulnerabilities that led to her diving head first into a life of serial one night stands and heavy drinking. Not exactly repentant, but certainly pensive, Shaparak Khorsandi mixed gentle good humour with salacious anecdote to paint a picture of someone working out who she was, and who she is now.